Mar. 25th, 2010

Mar. 25th, 2010

Late last week, I noticed that Butters was more lethargic than usual, and Friday he didn't seem to eat anything, so Saturday morning, in we went to the vet. They kept him overnight, treated him for a liver problem (as he was very dehydrated and his values were all off), and when he didn't get better, they did a barium series on Monday, thinking there might be a blockage. When the barium didn't even make it out of his stomach, they opened him up and found, apparently, a huge gall bladder tumor (size of a walnut, said the vet - and when you're the size of a ferret, that's pretty big!) The vet's done a lot of ferret surgeries, and says he's only run into two or three of these - so yay Butters for being special! The good news is, ferrets don't need their gall bladders. The bad news is, because of where the gall bladder is placed, it's hard to get the whole tumor out, and it's a very stressful surgery. However, since Butters was in good health otherwise, and the other main option was to just not wake him up from surgery, I decided the vet should go for it. And he did, and I wouldn't be writing this in such a cheerful fashion if he had not made it!

So, he came home yesterday, and I took off a half day today and all of tomorrow to sit around and take care of him. This is the first ferret-recovery I've had to do while I had a real job, so this is a bit more challenging. However, he's doing really well - he's interested in eating kibble (though he finds chewing it so tiiiring....he just stops and lies down mid-chew, which is adorable but not helpful), and he's slurping up the baby food-vitamin mix like it's going out of style. So much so, that I actually thought he might pop earlier. He did not.

So my planned Boston trip has turned into an at-home ferret weekend. But that's fine; I'm just glad he's here to fuss over.

Oh, and Otto? Totally freaked out by the whole situation, both Butters leaving, *and* Butters returning. They've never been apart until this week, and when I brought Butters back, they sniffed each other for over a full minute. Crazy amounts of sniffing! I still have to basically keep them apart, though, as Butters is still quite rickety. But soon, I'm sure, they'll be back together. And since Butters doesn't need to be watched every minute, I am totally going to read books and watch movies and play Bioshock 2 all day tomorrow....:)